Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Kiwis fly over the ditch

Lee Murray writes:

New Zealand fantasy writers Jan Goldie
and JC Hart are enjoying worlds of success in Australia. Not that either writer
is a stranger to success: Goldie was a finalist in the 2014 Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon best
first book award, and Hart was shortlisted in the 2013 Australian Shadows
Awards for her short fiction The Dead Way.
Both have made the shortlists of New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards more
than once, with Hart picking up the coveted trophy in 2011. But lately, interest
in Hart’s Shadows nomination together with a flurry of new releases, have
created traction for her work across the ditch, while Goldie has come to the
notice of Australia’s IFWG Publishing, a boutique small press specialising in
quality science fiction and fantasy for soaring imaginations.

“As soon as we read Jan’s novel, we knew we were on to a winner,” says
Gerry Huntman, Managing Director of IFWG Publishing. “It has believable,
identifiable characters and vivid world building, and the storyline draws readers
in from beginning to end.”

Indeed, their latest
fantasy offerings ‒ Goldie’s Brave’s
Journey, and Hart’s SunTouched ‒ are
marvels of world building in which both writers address the universal themes of
power, betrayal and family.

In Brave’s Journey, a richly-crafted fantasy adventure for upper
middle grade readers, Goldie conjures up a world as fascinating as
Narnia, populated with Changels and chatter monkeys, princes and pepper trees,
and the ever-present Stinkbuggies. It’s the story of twelve
year old Brave, whose Uncle Steadfast drops in to let him know
he is heir-apparent to another world. Having enough trouble extricating himself
from Riley and his band of school bullies, Brave doesn’t believe a word of it.
Meanwhile, in Arvalonia, True Harboursfort is hoping to carve a better future
than the one her royalist family plans for her. Thrown into a vortex of
confusion, Brave and True have to grow up quickly to have any hope of saving
Arvalonia from the false queen, Mallevia…

Goldie sets her
characters on a journey through the searing inner heat of the desert, the
sticky humidity of the rainforest, and the slow inexorable current of the
Sugarcane River, as the pair seek the truth about their pasts.

“I’d
always wanted to write a classic fantasy quest where the characters’ inner
journeys echo their battles in the outside world,” says Goldie. “As the book
progressed I discovered that the magical world I’d created became a character too;
threatened by the bad guys, protected by the good guys and ever-changing. The
setting plays a huge part in this story.”

Darker and grimmer than Goldie’s novel, Hart’s SunTouched is
intended for older teens. A futuristic science fiction fantasy with romantic
elements, it’s also populated with ethereal creatures, but in this case they
are biophysical rather than magical, although they are equally well-crafted.

SunTouched is the tale of newly pregnant Madea, who’s
afflicted by a strange madness caused by prolonged exposure to the planet’s
atmosphere. Fearing the Dome authorities will have her Hollowed, reducing her
to mindless drone and condemning her baby, she runs away from her life and her
lover, becoming a pawn in the spiteful battle raging between the leaders of the
Dome community and an underground group of rebels. Both groups have their own
agenda, and both demand that Madea conform to their plans. But with the help of
some new friends, who are both terrifying and wonderful, and the trust of a
small boy, Madea sets out to harness her new skills and save the future of
Diamara.

Perhaps the reason that these fantasy
writers have burst onto the Australian publishing scene, is their ability to
write female characters with uncanny realism. Hart’s, Madea, and Goldie’s True
are strong, essential female roles, each loaded with insecurities, the result
of the sort of parental baggage that affects teenagers whatever world they hail
from. Is it because between them Hart and Goldie have five daughters to draw
from, that they are able to depict their female characters so keenly? Or could
it be that writing high fantasy provides a vehicle for developing characters
they’d like their daughters to aspire to: resourceful, determined, and fiercely
loyal. As Hart states: “It’s really important
to me that women ‒ young and old ‒ understand that strength isn’t just about
being active, about being physically strong, or pretending that everything is
okay. True strength comes in many forms, and vulnerability, kindness, love,
emotions, are all part of the package.”

Published
by IFWG Publishing, Jan Goldie’s Brave’s
Journey will be launched in Tauranga’s Incubator at the Historic Village in
17th Avenue on Thursday17 September, at 6pm.

LEE MURRAY is a five-time winner of New Zealand’s
Sir Julius Vogel Award. The holder of an Australian Shadows Award for Best
Edited Work (with Dan Rabarts) for Baby
Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror (Paper Road Press), Lee lives in
Wellington with her family.